Cross-Examination

• Speaker Johnson invites former Hamas hostage to SOTU: House Speaker Mike Johnson’s choice of guest to attend Joe Biden’s State of the Union tonight isn’t nearly as controversial as Donald Trump’s decision in 2020 to host and award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the inimitable Rush Limbaugh, but it may well pose a greater headache to Democrats. Her name is Mia Schem, and she was attending the October 7 Supernova music festival near Israel’s border with Gaza when she was shot in the right arm and then seized by Hamas terrorists. She was then held for 54 days before being released on November 30 and reunited with her family and loved ones. She has since undergone extensive surgery and rehabilitation on her wounded arm. Her family says she’s also developed epilepsy due to the trauma and the lack of sleep during her ordeal. A truck full of armed terrorists drove by, “and one of the Hamas members looked at me, and just shot me in the arm, at a very, very close range,” Schem says. “It’s important to me to reveal the real situation about the people who live in Gaza, who they really are, and what I went through there. I experienced hell. Everyone there are terrorists. … There are no innocent civilians, not one.” The barbarity and the sexual violence perpetrated upon Israeli women by Hamas have by now been well documented, but Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats nonetheless seem compelled to placate the Jew haters here in the U.S. Speaker Johnson has no such compunction. “I’m proud to stand with Mia and join her in demanding the release [of] all the hostages still held captive by Hamas,” he said. “We must continue to fight to get them home.”

• First lady pushes gun-grabbing ahead of Big Guy’s speech: Jill Biden couldn’t resist wading into Second Amendment politics on Tuesday during her remarks at the National Parent Teacher Association’s legislative conference. As CNN reports, Biden rattled off a series of gun-grabbing executive actions Scranton Brandon has taken, including “the creation of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention; the gun safety law passed by Congress; and investments in mental health programs, community violence prevention and school security.” The fight is never finished for the Left, though, and sure enough: “These changes will save lives,” Lady MacBiden added to predictable applause, “but they’re not enough. We need to pass universal background checks. We need laws that make sure guns are stored safely so children can’t pick them up off a nightstand or take them out of a drawer. And we have to ban assault weapons nationally now.” We’re not sure the Not-So-Good Doctor’s remarks are meant as a setup for a more specific call by her husband for Congress to ignore the Constitution and enact additional gun-grabbing legislation, but we’ll soon find out.

• What voter fraud? A George Soros-backed district attorney in Harris County, Texas, ran into a little trouble when she went to cast her vote in her own primary race. It turns out that someone had already cast a ballot under her name. How could this happen? Democrats and their Leftmedia cohorts repeatedly assure the American public that there are no voter fraud concerns that would justify the adoption of such “racist” election integrity laws as requiring voter ID. Well, it would appear that the Democrat DA in question, Kim Ogg, might want to rethink that claim. But it is likely a moot point anyway since Ogg lost her primary race in a landslide to her fellow Democrat and Soros-backed challenger Sean Teare.

• DHS failed to follow illegal immigrant DNA collection law: According to a recent Department of Homeland Security whistleblower, the agency has failed to collect DNA samples mandated by law from over 60% of illegal immigrants. While Border Patrol encountered 2.3 million migrants illegally crossing into the U.S. between October 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023, the agency only collected 843,000 migrants’ DNA samples. The 2005 law requires DNA samples collected from all individuals caught illegally crossing into the U.S. These samples must be sent to the FBI for its national database. Iowa Republican Senator Charles Grassley called the revelation “deeply concerning,” adding, “This failure weakens our justice system and empowers criminals to illegally cross our border, jeopardizing American lives.” Grassley also wants to know if the FBI had received a DNA sample of the Venezuelan illegal alien accused of murdering nursing student Laken Riley prior to her murder. The primary purpose of the 2005 law is to help Border Patrol officials determine the actual identity of illegal aliens who sneak in and often provide fake identities.

• Taxpayer-funded Cookie Monster campaigns for Biden: Having seen his approval ratings on the economy remain mired in the mud for many months now, Joe Biden is finally getting serious. Here’s how he put it Tuesday to his White House Competition Council: “Some of the small snack companies think you won’t even notice what they are doing when they charge you just as much for the same size bag of potato chips, only there’s a hell of a lot fewer chips in it.” Having settled on the dastardly “shrinkflation” scheme of greedy manufacturers, he’s now enlisted one of the Left’s sharpest economic minds to make his case. “I’ll tell you who did notice,” Biden said of the shrinkage: “The Cookie Monster. He pointed out his cookies are getting smaller, but he’s paying the same price. I was stunned when I found out that’s what actually happened.” Lest anyone think this was a one-off, a playfully ridiculous throw-away remark, think again. As The Washington Free Beacon reports, “The White House and the federally funded children’s show Sesame Street appear in lockstep in a bid to incubate President Joe Biden from concerns about inflation.” It gets worse. “Me hate shrinkflation! Me cookies are getting smaller,” said a painfully lame X post from “Cookie Monster,” which elicited a cringeworthy response from the White House: “C is for consumers getting ripped off. President Biden is calling on companies to put a stop to shrinkflation.” Imagine that. A president spends trillions of dollars we don’t have, and he’s “stunned” to find out that we now have far more dollars chasing far fewer goods and services. Now that we think about it, perhaps the Sesame Street approach is intellectually appropriate.

• SEC approves new carbon footprint rule: Bowing the climate change cult, the Securities and Exchange Commission voted 3-2, along party lines, to approve a new carbon footprint disclosure rule for large public companies. SEC Chair Gary Gensler, a Democrat, argued that the commission’s concern for having companies make “complete and truthful disclosure” was the rationale for the new carbon footprint rule. The new rule, which is significantly scaled back from earlier proposals after the SEC got an earful from stakeholders, will require certain large public companies to report carbon emissions it deems “material” to investors. The SEC pulled back on some of the more draconian elements of the initial proposal, which Justin Bis, director of the SEC watchdog group Financial Fairness Alliance, called “lawlessness.” The rule is estimated to cost individual companies roughly $500,000 to implement and will directly impact some 2,800 U.S.-based companies.

• Gender-bending ideology updates: In northern Virginia, Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) is being sued by America First Legal (AFL) over its policy requiring schools to allow biological males who identify as girls to freely access girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms. The AFL charges that FCPS’s “transgender” policy discriminates against female students based on their sex in violation of Virginia’s constitution. Furthermore, the AFL contends that FCPS’s policy requiring all students to refer to “students who identify as gender-expansive or transgender by their chosen name and pronoun, regardless of the name and gender recorded in the student’s permanent pupil record,” violates students’ constitutional right to freedom of speech and freedom of belief. Meanwhile, in Vermont, the state’s Education Department has agreed that a former high school snowboard coach, David Bloch — who was fired last year for expressing the view to two of his team members that males generally have a biological advantage over females in sports — did not violate the state’s policy against bullying and harassment. Bloch sued the school, and as his Alliance Defending Freedom lawyer Tyson Langhofer asserted, “Dave was wrongfully fired and … no teacher should ever lose their job for speaking the truth.” Following the Education Department’s decision, the school agreed to pay $75,000 in damages to Bloch for wrongful termination.

• Classic V-J Day “kiss” photo resists cancellation: It isn’t quite the Marines planting that flagpole on Mount Suribachi, but the image is iconic nonetheless. It’s become known simply as “The Kiss,” and it’s from August 14, 1945, the day Japan surrendered to bring an end to what was by far the most calamitous conflict in world history: World War II. The image is that of a sailor in uniform locking lips with an unsuspecting nurse in Times Square. “It was the moment,” said then-89-year-old George Mendonsa back in 2012, who said he’s the sailor in the photograph. “You come back from the Pacific, and finally, the war ends.” The object of his affection has also since been identified: She’s nurse Greta Friedman. And yet this week, we learned that a February 29 memo from within Joe Biden’s Department of Veterans Affairs was considering the banning of the Victory Over Japan Day image from all department facilities. According to the memo, this would be “in alignment with the Department Of Veterans Affairs’ commitment to maintaining a safe, respectful, and trauma-informed environment.” As The Daily Signal reports, “The memo goes on to say that ‘this action is promoted by the recognition that the photograph, which depicts a non-consensual act, is inconsistent with the VA’s no-tolerance policy towards sexual harassment and assault.’” So depictions of gay porn in children’s books are good to go, but a celebratory heterosexual smooch between adults is verboten? To VA Secretary Denis McDonough’s credit, he got a sense of the outrage and did damage control, posting the image and saying, “Let me be clear: This image is not banned from VA facilities — and we will keep it in VA facilities.”

Headlines

• State of the Union 2024: Trump will “correct” Biden’s address in live “play-by-play” (Washington Examiner)

• Biden has over 350,000 problems ahead of Trump rematch (Washington Examiner)

• Biden’s new strategy: Go for Trump’s jugular (Axios) and bury him with campaign cash (Politico)

• “Hard no”: Trump campaign rejects effort to have RNC foot former president’s legal bills (Fox News)

• New York governor deploys National Guard to fight crime on subway (Washington Free Beacon)

• Laken Riley’s suspected killer linked to bloodthirsty Venezuelan gang behind terror in NYC (New York Post)

• Illegal Mexican migrant allegedly kills Washington state trooper in high-speed crash after drinking, smoking weed (New York Post)

• Georgia House passes bill requiring police to help arrest undocumented immigrants after Laken Riley’s killing (AP) | Athens DA faces new effort to oust her from office (WSB)

• Gov. Kay Ivey signs into law bill to protect Alabama IVF services (AL.com)

• Leaked files from transgender medical org show “medical malpractice” (Daily Wire)

• Woman forced to give birth on side of the road because climate activists blocked a bridge (Not the Bee)

• “Rust” armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in fatal shooting of Halyna Hutchins (New York Post)

• Rubio renews effort to “end this stupid practice” of changing our clocks (Washington Examiner)

• Satire: With Daniel Penny arrested, NYC forced to deploy National Guard to protect subway (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.